


Amantis verendum

by analect



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Romance, Romantic Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:07:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/analect/pseuds/analect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have been lovers for a little over six months, but nothing is easy for Anders and Tobias Hawke, and love seems to come in equal measure with fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Justice in Surrender](https://archiveofourown.org/works/195063) by [analect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/analect/pseuds/analect). 



> _Okay, guilty as charged. I have been very slow recently with updates to my ongoing m!Hawke/Anders story, Justice in Surrender. Real life has been kicking my arse, but I come bearing this small, four-chapter story as an apology to all the readers who've been waiting for an end to the unremitting UST in JiS._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Amantis verendum features the same mage!Hawke (Tobias) and Anders, but on a slightly different timeline... more of a little "what-if" story than anything. It's just a brief glimpse into the constant tension between these two men, and one enduring obstacle in their relationship. No major spoilers for Justice in Surrender; don't worry. Also, unless my Latin-fu has totally failed me (which is very possible; corrections are welcome), the title may be translated as "A Lover's Fear"._

He wakes, drenched in sweat. The sheets are damp ropes wound around his legs, his skin bare and chilled. When he opens his eyes, the dream is still a patchwork of searing colours against the darkness, and the shadows come pouring in to fill a new reality that feels stark and unnatural. His own flesh, touched with thin highlights of bluish white from the high, small window, seems strange and leaden, and the echoes of that mournful voice roar in his ears like the sound of the ocean trapped in a shell.

_You can’t save me, Hawke_.

Tobias rubs a hand across his face. It’s a dream. It’s only a dream. Now he’s awake, it’s receding back into the Fade, into the timeless world where things that aren’t real go—the place that dreams come from, and the place where the demons wait—and he knows it doesn’t matter. It’s all right. Everything is all right.

He murmurs the words under his breath like a mantra, but they don’t do much good. He’s cold now, and he reaches for the blanket he must have kicked to the floor.

It doesn’t feel right. This bed, this room… this house. It is all empty stone walls, and it is too big and too cold. The Amell estate, everyone still calls it, because that’s what it is, and what it always will be. His mother’s old family home, not his. He never wanted it; he still doesn’t.

They’ve not been in that long, so it has yet to really feel like home, and Tobias doubts it ever will. If he’s honest, he knows there’s only one place in this city that _does_ feel like home, though he would rather not admit it, even to himself.

The Ten Bells is the cheap dockside tavern where he goes to leave the world behind him on those glorious, stolen nights. From the moment the door closes until the hour of the sunrise—which he watches filter through the grimy window, its pale rays kissing the blond head on the pillow beside him—he is safe, warm, and happy.

He wants to believe Anders feels the same way, because he so badly wants to believe that he is the one thing in the healer’s life that gives him solace from all his agonies… and Tobias knows that is an arrogant thing to wish.

He doesn’t care, though.

They have been lovers for less than six months. Some days it feels like barely a breath of time has passed, and some days it seems an eternity. He wouldn’t change anything, however. All that time they spent, for their own stupid reasons, not acting on the things they wanted to… he hated it. Hated the waiting and the yearning, and the way it felt as if he was missing someone he’d never even had close to him in the first place. Still, it brought them to this point. They trust each other now… Anders trusts him. He understands, at last, that Tobias has neither underestimated nor been put off by the ghosts—or, rather, the spirit—he carries around his shoulders, and he is opening up, although it is happening slowly.

Tobias huddles under the blanket, and frowns at the empty side of his bed. The heavy velvet curtains are drawn but, as is his custom, he has left a chink between them through which moonlight seeps to illuminate the room. Since the Deep Roads, Tobias can’t bear the unbroken dark.

The silvery light touches the place where Anders ought to be, yet very rarely is, and Tobias’ frown deepens as the frail tongues of the dream swipe at him, thick and clouded.

There was the great grey swell of the ocean, and it washed through the streets, pushing the tide of Kirkwall’s iniquity ahead of it. People screamed and, when it broke through the gates of the alienage, it tore down the vhenadahl tree. Merrill was there, saying something about needing the blood of ten thousand slaves to replant it, and Tobias remembers seeing Aveline swallowed by the water as she stood before the wave, her sword drawn, shouting, “I am not my father’s daughter”.

He ran through Lowtown, only just keeping ahead of the flood, and he wanted to find Anders, somehow assuming that the water hadn’t already taken Darktown. He wasn’t where he should be, and Tobias was running and running, trying to reach him. He turned out to be at the centre of the chantry courtyard, his arms flung wide as the tide bore down on him, but when he turned he wasn’t Anders. The bright blue glare that burned from his eyes was Justice, completely unchained, and that unimaginable power welled in him, violent and unstoppable.

His hands blazed with twin flares of light, sparks dancing in his hair and magical energy rising off his skin like a heat haze. Tobias called his name, but he didn’t respond. He just rose up and up, until the toes of his boots barely scraped the flagstones and, his arms outstretched, he tipped his head back to the sky and roared. The light filled him then… or perhaps flowed out of him, like a burning pillar. It was too bright, too painful to watch, and it was like that time beneath The Gallows, when Tobias tried to stop Anders—no, tried to stop _Justice_ , because he does still believe there is a difference between them—from killing an innocent girl. In the dream, he ran across the courtyard, but his hands met raw power instead of flesh or cloth, and that terrible, scything fire scorched his palms, leaving welts and the terror of failure behind it.

Anders pushed him away, the wall of force a frightening, alienating thing—like a blade coming down across the thousand tiny threads that tie them together—and, as the ocean tore through the streets, washing all of Kirkwall before it, Tobias saw him burn. The blue fire, that energy that Justice brings from the Fade, like some pure current of lyrium-infused power, consumed him completely and made the flood waters boil… and that sad, low voice whispered to Tobias as they both drowned:

_You can’t save me, Hawke._

But it’s just a dream. It isn’t real. The city is not flooding, and there is no choking scar of water and loss in his lungs.

Tobias takes a deep breath, just to prove this point, and he starts to feel better for it.

He rolls over, props his chin on his knuckles, and snakes his free hand across the bed, where he traces the place that Anders should lay. Tobias has never known the feeling of missing someone to be like this before. He misses his father, and Bethany, and even Carver, despite the fact his joining the templars was an agonising betrayal, as well as a two-fingered salute to everything that Tobias is, and he knows that’s just how his brother meant it. Still, those are soul-true aches that are with him every day… but they are inside him. They do not creep out into his very flesh, tracing the lines of his body like the melancholy kisses of a lover who knows he has to leave. He does not shiver as if physically chilled when he thinks of his sister, or of Malcolm. His chest twists on the memories, sometimes, but this is different.

This… this is something else entirely.

Tobias’ fingers flex ruefully on the empty sheet. Anders is busy at the clinic, as he has been for weeks. Despite what he said after the business with the girl beneath The Gallows, he _has_ trusted himself to heal, although he relies more on potions and poultices than magic now. One of the boys he has been sheltering for the Underground has proved a talented healer, so there is that excuse to hide behind. Anders is fond of excuses.

He doesn’t come to the estate often, anyway. He doesn’t feel comfortable here, maybe because Tobias doesn’t feel comfortable… but more likely because Leandra is here too, and although she is the soul of politeness to Anders’ face, she doesn’t approve of him. She doesn’t approve of what she calls Tobias’ choice, and he is aware that she’s angry because she didn’t know… because he never told her, and she feels embarrassed. That doesn’t ameliorate or change a thing, however.

She wanted him—no, _expected_ him—to make a nice, respectable marriage. Nothing too fancy: minor to middling gentry, perhaps. She told him so. She probably already had a girl in mind; no doubt one of the daughters of the interminable succession of people she was suddenly inviting to dinner as soon as they had the dustcovers off the new furniture.

The first thing she did, as soon as they moved in here, was put him on the meat market. She wants him to continue the Amell line, provide grandchildren, and live like a wealthy man. He suspects she has her eye on being Lady Hawke—or maybe Amell, because sometimes it’s almost like his father’s name is suddenly an irrelevance to her—by next Wintersend.

She turned quiet and withdrawn when he got angry about it, refused to go to some stupid ball and push insipid, over-rouged young women around the floor for the evening… told her why. He will never consent to a marriage he doesn’t want, with a woman he could never grow to love, in a city he doesn’t wish to call home. He hopes he doesn’t have it in him to cloak himself in that many lies. He’d like to think so, anyway.

Anders doesn’t know he is a bone of contention between mother and son, although he has probably guessed. Every time he has spent the night here, a kind of coldness seems to linger in the house afterwards. So, it’s easier to keep going to the tavern when they want time together. Tobias prefers it, at any rate. It feels honest, even if it is stolen time, and even if they’re skulking around like two thieves, plotting in the shadows.

It’s not often enough, though. And he wants—like he wants right now—just to be able to reach out and touch the man he loves. He needs to prove to himself that Anders is there, that he’s all right, and that everything is still under control. He needs not to miss him this way.

Of course, he’s too awake now. Too awake to sleep, too fidgety to lie quietly.

Tobias swings his legs out of bed. The room is still moon-shrouded, but that is not enough light for what he wants, so he flicks his fingers and pulls a small, pale orb from the air. It circles his head as he pads to his writing desk, retrieving a dressing robe from the floor on the way, and slipping it over his naked body as defence against the night’s chill. He cinches the belt tight, and lets his hand rove over the paperwork on the desk. There are letters, bills, receipts… a few books he’s started reading. There is an old copy of Anders’ bloody manifesto in one of them, and Tobias smiles as his thumb brushes the ragged edge. He likes the paragraph that begins, “We who are the subjugated shall no longer acquiesce beneath the Chantry’s yoke”.

Tobias doesn’t necessarily agree with the more radical end of Libertarian politics, though he supports the principles… but he loves it when Anders gets polemical. He flares with something bright and righteous, and it’s beautiful to watch.

There is another piece of paper tucked into one of the other books. It is a new one, a gift for no reason other than the pleasure of giving. Tobias’ smile widens as he flips open the cover of _An Introduction to the Healing Arts_ —and it’s instant death-by-templar if anyone finds this tome in his possession, because who else but a mage would own an instructional volume on healing magic—and the scrawl on the flyleaf fills him with a flush of warmth.

_T: Because you need all the help you can get. - A._

They have this running joke, he and Anders, that Tobias’ natural magical gifts are restricted purely to force spells and the occasional fireball… that he is the blunt instrument of mages, useful only for unjamming stuck doors, or removing recalcitrant tree stumps from gardens. His adventures in healing have been almost unilaterally disastrous, though Anders does occasionally try to teach him, and he _is_ eager to learn, albeit terrified of the possible consequences. He once almost set the clinic on fire, so he doesn’t like to imagine what he could do to a live person.

Tobias turns past the diagram of a dissected body, flicks a few more pages, and finds the slip of paper that caught his attention. The scrawl is familiar, but the words are not.

Gradually, the smile drops from his face.


	2. Chapter 2

It is a dream. It is a dream like any other, and it is pleasant enough. He is walking on the shore of a beach—a rocky, grainy kind of beach, because this is the Fade, and the things that live here never really manage to make a proper facsimile of the mortal world—and the salt wind catches at his hair. He tastes the ocean on his lips, and feels coarse sand yield in soft ridges beneath his boots. A little way ahead, on the shore’s curve, there is the black mouth of a cave facing out to the grey-capped bob of the waves.

Anders smiles. He’s had this dream before.

In the cave—and it’s amazing how he reaches it so quickly, as if he’s flown the distance— _he_ is waiting. Anders grins breathlessly at the sight of him, and his pulse skitters.

He is naked, sprawled out on the sandy floor with his back resting against a rock, that cocky smile on his handsome face. Dark chestnut hair, with hints of that very Fereldan reddish hue, sits in soft waves at his temples, cut short and slightly tousled, the way it always is. There is a day or two’s stubble on his chin, and his green eyes dance with some unspoken smart-mouthed comment. He holds out a hand, and that is all he has to do.

Anders folds into his embrace, the world collapsing around him as it does in dreams, because only the moment—only the action, the feeling—matters. He has the fullness of those firm, dry lips against his, his fingers kneading smooth, warm flesh. Strong arms slip tight around him, and somehow Hawke manages to murmur his name while kissing him.

 _I knew you’d come_.

Anders doesn’t mind about the impracticalities. He wants to make love, right here, because in dreams the sand doesn’t matter and won’t get anywhere painful. The tide can’t come in and wash them away and—even if it could—he wouldn’t care if he drowned, as long as he was with _him_.

They touch each other in that luxurious, time-elided way of dreams, and Anders gets what he wants. He’s naked, somehow, and those lean, tanned hands caress his body, trembling just a little… the way Tobias trembles when he’s dizzy with want and hunger, and begging for release. It’s something Anders has always loved, doing that to a man like him. Watching someone so sure of himself, so given to cynicism and sarcastic arrogance, bite his lip and stifle a sob of need as he’s slowly impaled.

Tobias loves to be fucked. He loves the slow, gentle exchange of power and pleasure, giving himself over completely as he surrenders his body… and sometimes he loves to fuck hard and raw, when their kisses bruise and their ecstasy mixes in one blinding star that slices through the night in golden howls of joy.

He gives as good as he gets, too, and he has quite the weapon to do it with. The first time Anders let Tobias have him, it was like the sun itself exploded inside him, although he is one of those rare men who does not do what he does to Anders by virtue of his physical gifts alone. He _is_ handsome—and he is fit, and well-built, and yes, slightly better endowed than Anders is himself—but not stunningly so. He is not the kind of man at whose entrance an entire tavern will stop and stare… but he _does_ have charisma. Anders thinks so, anyway.

Tobias has an irreverent wit, underscored by a compassionate nature he does his best to hide, and they think alike in many ways. They share enough common ground to feel so at home in each other’s presence that sometimes Anders forgets his lover does not understand everything that exists in his world. He knows he gets frustrated then, and he snaps and lashes out, and Tobias grows moody and withdrawn, and yet it doesn’t matter. After a few days, one of them will go to the other, and they will make their peace like swans in courtship dances, bowing and swaying around each other until things are mended.

What they have is imperfect, but it is more than Anders has ever dreamed of.

They fuck, hard and hungry, on the floor of the cave, and Tobias pulls back to look at him with those beautiful green eyes, his mouth a bruised curl of soft adoration. There is love in his face… and it is the real, honest love that he speaks of in the waking world, when he says the bad things don’t matter and that, whatever happens, he will never leave.

Anders has yet to truly believe him, deep down.

The dream echoes with memories then: the low murmur of a voice in a cheap tavern bedroom—neither of them are well equipped to entertain in the places they call home—and the feel of warm skin against his, and a broad hand splayed on his back.

_I love you, Anders. I don’t care what you are, what you do… I love you, and I’ll be here._

It is everything he wants to hear, and yet everything he fears. It fills him up until he can’t breathe, and his love for this man overwhelms him, seeping into every crack in his soul even though he knows it is a dangerous folly. He folds against the strong, solid body, his lips cleaving to a mouth that mirrors his own in its need and desire. The comforting touch of familiar fingers soothes his cheek, and he feels himself begin to slip, everything that rises up within him gradually eroding the tentative threads of control.

He feels so much more than he used to. He supposes it was a defence mechanism, once; that glibness of his cut him off from the pain the world dealt him, and he could simply hide within the shell he made for himself. It doesn’t work now. Sometimes he doesn’t understand how people can keep it all inside them. He veers between being so tired that he’s numb, and feeling so much that he thinks his skin is going to burst.

He can’t do it, can’t hold it in. The love he feels is terrible, terrifying: it is the raw edges of lust and soul-deep need, whetted by bone-worn affection and loyalty, and yet it is also a fierce, desperate possessiveness, a hunger that tears at him and can’t be denied. It is a resentful, fearful, jealous anger, because this man must be his and his alone, and yet he can’t believe that they could share this bond to begin with, much less that he is worthy of it. He is afraid, afraid of the depth of his feelings, and of the confusion they engender. This love is not something pure or righteous. It is not a simple concept, distilled the way a spirit’s essence can capture a virtue. It is not—at least not entirely—the kind of all-encompassing, beautiful love that is unconditional and perfect, and resonates at the core of life itself. It _is_ unconditional, yes, but not because that is right. It is unconditional in the same way as breathing is if you don’t want to choke, and this frightens him all the more.

He can’t say it, though. It spills out of him, in the dream, as they make this fierce, clutching love on the sand, and he can’t control himself. He is burning with it, panting and crying out, and his lover writhes beneath him as ecstasy turns to agony, and then someone is screaming. It is Hawke, and the world has turned to the translucent, whitish-blue of a lyrium haze. Anders can feel everything, see everything… it is all too much. He burns with it, feels it break from him—this light, this rawness of _life_ that is too powerful to keep chained—and his very skin starts to fracture, his flesh mutating in boiling masses of crackling power and roiling, blackened blood.

It hurts worse than anything he could imagine—worse than darkspawn spears, worse than templars’ steel, worse than Karl dying in his arms—and when it is over, he is cradling Tobias’ scorched, lifeless remains to his chest, and he can’t wake up. He knows it’s a dream; he has had this dream before, and he thought he had learned all he needed to from it, but it won’t let him go.

Anders must hold his lover’s corpse, and his own twisted lips—pulled back now, like withered darkspawn flesh, as if the taint has swallowed him up and spat him out, this creature that is part ghoul and part abomination—rove over blistered skin that sloughs off at his touch. His knotted, crabbed hands stroke the remnants of dark chestnut hair, and as he finally wakes, the sobs that wrack him are all too real.

He curls up on his side, shivering beneath the blanket and trying to stifle his breathing so he won’t wake anyone. Beyond the ratty curtain hung on a broom handle that marks out what passes for his private space, there are patients in the clinic. There are his apprentices—the ones he shelters for the Underground, until passage can be bought for them somewhere safer than this pig of a city—and he has to show _them_ that he is in control. He must be the example of what an apostate can be, because if he fails, everything fails, and he merely proves the templars right.

That is what Tobias told him, on one of the dark nights when everything was too difficult, and it was all he could do to walk from the door to the edge of the bed.

_You’re more than this. From what you told me, you offered what you did to Justice to save him—_

Is that true? He can’t quite remember. There were other reasons, maybe… the spirit said there would be advantages, that he would lend a great deal of power to Anders’ mortal body, and of course there were the templars, overrunning the Vigil like rats. They probably had something to do with his decision, but he’s not sure anymore, because he remembers it both from his perspective, and from Justice’s, and the spirit’s view is tinged with this terrible hunger, this fear of—what? Dying? Perhaps so, perhaps not—and this need to know, to understand the mortal world better, and to bring to it what he believed it needed. Justice… huh, well, that was the theory. Trust Hawke to somehow twist that into a fairytale.

_—you didn’t do it for your own gain. You’re not an abomination. And look at everything you do here, all those people you’ve saved, people you’ve healed… how can you think, even for a moment, that we’d cope without you?_

He closes his eyes, and remembers the comforting warmth of Tobias’ arms, and the curious innocence in his face, like he honestly believes Anders is a good man.

_I wouldn’t. I need you. You know that._

He doesn’t, Anders is sure. He shouldn’t, anyway.

It doesn’t matter. Tobias is a better role model than him, a better example… and that’s what people should see. He is a mage who lives free. He has had dealings with the qunari Arishok, and Viscount Dumar, and he is uncowed by the nobles, and the guard. He is brave and honest—mainly, at a basic moral level, most of the time—and he doesn’t hurt anyone… not unless he’s been paid to, anyway. Usually. Or unless they’ve done something to offend or annoy him.

_That is not a correct definition of ‘honest’. Nor of ‘good’ or ‘just’._

Anders sits up slowly, his narrow pallet creaking beneath him, and rubs his forehead. He knows that. Tobias’ contradictions cause him plenty of problems… they always have. Things like laws aren’t where justice is, though. Not true justice. There is a more fundamental level than that, and it is that pared-back way of looking at things that frightens him.

So much frightens him now. Things that never used to… and even the things that shouldn’t.


	3. Chapter 3

Tobias sits at his writing desk, frowning at the half-crumpled piece of paper. From the look of it, he imagines Anders screwed it up, then smoothed it out before tucking it into the book. He must have been debating whether to leave it there for Tobias to find… or perhaps he just forgot about it.

That seems unlikely, but then this is Anders, and it’s hard to tell. Tobias traces the spidery black shapes of the words with the tips of his fingers, and the writing is so much like Anders himself, full of the dichotomies of strong, hard angles, and the reaching idealisms of long, sketchy lines.

He’s not sure whether it is truly a poem, or simply thoughts set to the fragments of words. Maybe they are the same thing, maybe not. Either way, Tobias reads it over and over again, and his frown grows deeper.

 

_we are the wave, you and I,  
pulling on an empty tide.   
your breath breaks across me,   
the grey water ripples,  
_ _and black gulls scream above us._

_under full skies we teem,  
blood and salt, sand and mud,   
and there are things we do   
that cannot be forgiven._

_I meet you in the even light,  
and hide my heart   
in broken spaces,   
but there is no shelter   
from an unending storm._

He doesn’t know whether he finds it beautiful or terrifying. It is about them… probably. It may not be. The paper is undated—and Tobias is very aware that he is not Anders’ first love. He struggles with that occasionally, and perhaps in a rather immature, self-indulgent sort of way. He wishes he didn’t, but he can’t help it, because _he_ has never had anyone this close to him before.

There was never the opportunity, back in Ferelden. For most of Tobias’ life, his family was either moving around, or so centred on itself that he rarely had the chance to have more than fleeting contact with anyone outside it. Besides, Lothering was a small farming community—not even the great trade outpost it had been in years past. It wasn’t exactly overburdened with potential lovers.

There were a few boys with whom Tobias skirted the shores of erotic discovery… one of whom he thought he loved, but who shrank from him, horrified, when he found out about the mage thing. Tobias, frightened the templars would come for him (although they never did, and Cal simply took to pretending he didn’t exist, instead of reporting him) never pushed his luck again. Then, of course, Malcolm died, and life got harder… and _then_ there was the Blight.

Anders, obviously, grew up in the Circle. For all he hears about how awful it was, Tobias rather envies the idea of proximity. All those other people who are _like you_. Not being a minority, not being alone… and Anders wasn’t alone. He had Karl. Tobias has heard quite a bit about those years, in small dribs, drabs, and snippets, because—when he can do it calmly, without letting the anger, guilt, and regret that those memories engender take over—talking about it seems to help Anders.

He loved Karl. Loved him the giddy, intense, desperate way that first love fills a person up, and it’s obvious from the way he talks that Karl loved him just as much. Anyone would, Tobias supposes, and the mental picture he has of Anders at sixteen—all elbows, knees, and rebellion—makes his heart ache a little.

He wishes he’d known him then… known him sometime before the Grey Wardens, and Justice, and the cares that weigh so heavily on him now. He wishes _he’d_ been that first love, Tobias supposes, and he acknowledges that he is jealous of Karl, and jealous of all those unnamed lovers who came later. He doesn’t like that some of them were women, either, though he couldn’t possibly tell Anders that. Anders would think him narrow-minded, because he just doesn’t see those kinds of distinctions.

Tobias has never been interested in the fairer sex. He can perform, but it is a perfunctory act, like the grim, breathless rutting he shared with Isabela, down in the Deep Roads when they both thought they were going to die. Generally speaking, women’s bodies hold no allure or mystique that enthrals him, and while some of them are very nice people, he doesn’t see the attraction of wanting to share a bed, much less a life with one.

Anders, however, has been known to wax lyrical about breasts, and the delights of sweetness and curves, and it makes Tobias restless and uneasy… although he knows it shouldn’t. He should be secure in Anders’ love, because he has pledged it completely and, anyway, it’s highly unlikely that anyone else could give him what Tobias does. They have been through enough together that Anders trusts him—trusts him with his secrets, with his beliefs, and with his struggles. That is the part of his burden Tobias gladly shoulders. He can’t change what has already been done but, when Justice is prowling and rattling at the bars, he can talk Anders down. He can calm him the way no one else can, and that means a lot.

So, this thing—this poem, this cry from the depths—it seems it _is_ about them, or it at least might be, if it is about anyone at all. It was in the book that Anders gave him, and Tobias doesn’t know what to make of that. Had it been there all along, or has it been slipped in recently? It’s difficult to tell.

Either way, he thinks it is beautiful. More beautiful than terrifying, probably, yet it is beauty that is sharp-edged and ruthless, and he wounds himself on its blade. Is this what Anders really thinks? How he feels when they are together? There is a sense of hopelessness about that which frightens Tobias… like a breath of apology, secreted behind the words.

He chews his lip thoughtfully, and slides the paper back between the leaves of the tome. It is late enough to be early in the morning. His eyes ache, his head hurts, and he wishes he’d stayed in bed.

He crosses his too-big-bed-chamber, crawls under the covers, and lets the orb of light he conjured wink out. The moon has grown thin, its light weakening, and Tobias supposes he will lay here and watch it turn to dawn, but at some point he closes his eyes and, when he opens them again, a much brighter light is streaming through the gap in his curtains.

He blinks, and winces, and wonders why he can’t remember having any dreams.


	4. Chapter 4

It is not simple. He has tried to explain it, but no one really understands.

It isn't like he can have a conversation with Justice. The spirit is a part of him, and everyone has multiple facets to themselves. There is, for example, the part of Anders that—though he has always been a little afraid of most animals, and the tendencies they have to possess teeth and claws and the desire to hunt prey, which you can easily be mistaken for when you are on the run in unfamiliar woodland—nevertheless wrinkles up and grins when he sees a cat playing with a skein of yarn. There is the part of him that warms in an entirely different way when he sees a pretty girl, or a good-looking man, and idles in pleasant bedchamber thoughts, even if he has no intention of approaching them.

There are parts of him that worry about things he can't control, and things he can but doesn't, and parts that are made of fear, or logic, or anger, jealousy, apathy… and more besides. There is a part of him that, though he has not seen his mother since he was fourteen years old, continues to think like her son, and sometimes repeats silly, idiosyncratic things he used to hear her say, or words of her native tongue, to which he is no longer entirely sure he is putting the right meanings.

And, now, there is a part of him that is Justice. Just as some of those other old thoughts and feelings rise up—the way his self-doubt tugs at him, or his libido nudges him at inconvenient moments—he feels the spirit move in response to certain things… but it isn't a conversation. It isn't something he can control, anymore than he can stop associating lamb and pea stew with the first tavern he ever stayed at, back when he escaped the Tower successfully for the first time, only to end up captured again after the girl he spent the night with stole his money and his clothes while he was sleeping. A man really cannot be on the run in the nude. It makes him far too easy to spot. Still, she had a beautiful smile and immaculate breasts, and Anders thinks of her every time he smells that particular dish cooking.

The clinic is busy that morning. People expect him to stride between the pallets, giving orders and presenting solutions. He is meant to be in charge here, isn't he? For a moment before it all begins, in those few seconds when the doors are opened and he sees the people waiting for him, sweat pricks his back and his stomach turns to water. He is almost paralysed with fear, because he's sure he can't do it. This isn't him. He has stumbled, somehow, into some other man's life, and he needs to find the way back… but there isn't one, and he has no choice but to roll up his sleeves and get on with it.

He tries. He tries very hard, and he waits for Justice to rise up in him and grant him that power, but it never quite happens, and he still feels so horribly adrift.

Hawke arrives while Anders is setting a child's broken leg. It is a bad break, and there is a lot of crushing around the wound, because the boy was caught beneath some barrels when a cart overturned near the docks.

Anders knows from the way people are looking at him that they expect him to wave his hands and make it all right with magic. He is the healer, and that is what he is supposed to do. It was for that ability that Darktown took him to its heart and, in the years since, it has protected him. Well… Darktown and Varric's briberies, and he knows who he has to thank for _that_.

They don't understand, though. They don't know what might happen if he does it, if he lets the power out… if Justice catches the scent of it on the air, like a hound tasting blood. He doesn't even dare reach out to the Fade, because what he pulls through may not be the small, sympathetic, curious wisps of spirits that want to help. He isn't even sure he can control that much anymore.

So, he is relying on his skill with the poultices and potions that his apprentices have made up, and the deft, careful touch that is part knack and part years of experience.

It is a simple enough matter to reset the bone, once the surrounding damage has been addressed. He binds it and splints it, and knows without looking up when Hawke has crossed the clinic, moving from the doors to the rows of boiling coppers near the fires at the back. Part of Anders wants to throw down the plaisters and poultices he is working with and run to him, but it is only a small part—that small, impulsive part that he has so determinedly starved for so long—and, besides, he is aware that despite his efforts, this young boy will probably always walk with a bad limp.

_He would not if you used magic. Reach deep, draw upon your power, and you can cause the healing to be quicker, the bone to be straighter…. You could take more of his pain, lessen the chance of infection. You could—_

— _just as equally end up unleashing something appalling on an entire roomful of people. What if he's "not worthy" of healing?_

— _He is a child._

— _Yes. Everyone is, once. What if he grows up to be a templar? A sadistic bastard like Alrik?_

— _Then… then he will be a templar with a limp._

Anders presses the back of his hand to his forehead, trying to calm the not-really-a-conversation he isn't having with himself. It is done. The child is still snivelling a bit, but he is being carried away by a grateful father; a heavily bearded man who doesn't look Anders in the eye, or really listen to the half-shaped words he realises he is mumbling about keeping weight off the limb, and allowing the splint to do its work. The knots of people are dispersing, and that feels like a relief, like he is finally exhaling... and yet he doesn't want to be this alone.

He wants to rub his eyes, but his fingers are still coated with the lard and herb mixture he used on the boy's leg, and he blinks a bit in confusion when a cloth appears in front of him. It is being held by a familiar hand, and Anders smiles faintly as he takes it.

"This is early for you," he observes mildly, wiping his hands on the cloth.

Tobias gives him that look that is one part withering scorn and three parts naked desire. Anders is surprised by that, because he hasn't seen it in a while. At the beginning—in those first few weeks when they barely seemed to come up for air between kisses—it was a familiar sight. Tobias would grab any opportunity to pin him against something and give him as thorough a going over as he could without dropping his pants. Anders was no better, either. He can't even remember the number of times he palmed off care of his patients and his clinic to one of the assistants, and pretended to himself (or maybe to Justice) that it was mostly because he was afraid of healing again, when all he wanted was just to run away.

He abandoned his responsibilities readily, or near enough; snatching nights to spend in his lover's arms, and not regretting a minute of it. Hawke filled his head like fog then, choked him with the obsessive need to prove it was all real, and that it was really happening. It was intense, incredible… and, yes, worth every moment. Easily.

He hadn't believed it would be possible for that bare blade of want to diminish, for them to feel sated enough with each other—or secure enough, perhaps—to allow things to calm. It has, though. They don't tear at each other with such regular hunger, their desperation blunted by knowing that there _will_ be a tomorrow. Of course, if he's honest with himself (and, ultimately, he has little choice), Anders knows that his tomorrows are limited. Tobias hasn't fully grasped that yet, no matter how hard Anders has tried to explain it.

Mind you, he can't quite believe it _is_ real. He can't quite believe he's as happy as he feels… even if part of him resents that happiness. It isn't that Justice doesn't want him to be content; rather that he doesn't see things the same way.

Hawke is the problem, of course, because he always is. This man, right here, has the power to make him deliriously happy… so happy that he doesn't just forget to be angry at the world, but that he could almost forget there _is_ a world. That's frightening, really.

It's exactly what he does now, as Anders finds himself dragged into a shadowy corner, behind one of the rough-cut doors that leads to the potions cupboard.

"What—?"

"Just a minute. I need to talk to you."

Anders is contemplating protesting, but then Tobias kisses him, hard and unyielding, and his embrace is perfumed with desperation. He murmurs small, thin words into the space between them—a breathless 'I love you', and then a soft, sweet endearment that makes Anders' stomach tighten, because he's never been anyone's 'darling' before in his life—and the breath leaks from his lungs unsteadily.

"That's not really 'talking'," he murmurs weakly, because if he tells Hawke he loves him now, he'll say it a dozen times, and he may not be able to stop. "Not that I'm complaining… but what's brought this on?"

Tobias pulls back and looks at him sadly, something bitter and ragged lancing his eyes.

"Are you happy?" he asks, his voice low and thick. "I mean, are we…? Is everything all right?"

Anders winces, and tries to pull out a nonchalant reply. "What, apart from Meredith, and the Circle, and the grand cleric, and—"

"Please, just…. That's not what I mean."

He pulls a folded scrap of paper from his pocket, smoothing it out between his fingers, and Anders frowns as he begins to suspect he knows what's on it.

"Oh."

"Is it about us?"

Tobias looks so terribly worried, and Anders shakes his head vehemently. "No. Well… no. Not really."

"'Not really?' Huh. How come I heard 'yes' when you said that?"

Anders folds his hand over his lover's, feeling the broad ridges of knuckles tense beneath his grasp. "All right. Yes, _and_ no. It means…." He fingers the edges of the paper, and is reminded in painful clarity of the night he wrote it, when it was raining and the air smelled of copper, and it was a choice between bleeding his anger and frustration onto the page or taking a hatchet to his own head. "It means things are never going to be the way I wish they were. And I hate that. I truly do. If I could change things, I'd want it to be so we could have a normal life… a good life."

"We can," Tobias protests, but Anders knows he doesn't believe it.

There will always be Justice, and the brooding threat of disquiet, whether Kirkwall tumbles into the abyss or not. As long as there is unfairness and injustice in the world, there will be no honest peace, no calm or quiet.

"Come to the house tonight," he murmurs, tugging at Anders' wrist. "Please?"

"What's wrong with the Bells?"

"I want you in my own bed," Tobias says softly. " _Our_ bed."

Anders nods dumbly, despite the fact that he dislikes the draughty mansion and the icy politeness of Hawke's mother, who always manages to look at him with accusation in her eyes. He can't really argue with the sentiment.

Satisfied, Tobias smiles, and he is quite content to busy himself trying to be useful until the last of the patients are cleared. He rolls bandages, stirs boiling coppers… flirts with rheumatic elderly ladies. More than once, Anders catches himself watching him, and the months don't seem to have passed at all. He thinks he will never tarnish the way he feels for this man… and then the murmurs of the dreams come back on him, and he's cold all over again.

It is late when they finally retire to Hightown, and they sneak into Tobias' house like thieves, padding up the stairs to his chambers on pointed toes. Briefly, Anders wants to giggle, because it's like being back in the Tower, finding secret hidey-holes the templars don't know about, and using them to surreptitiously smoke and drink and screw. Then, he doesn't want to laugh, because his head is full of templars who _aren't_ the cartoonish, draconic dullards of his youth, who passed down few greater sentences than detentions and slapped wrists.

He almost freezes up for a moment, but Tobias leads him on, up into the plushness of his room.

_Our room. Is it our room? I didn't know it was our room._

That seems to be what he wants. Anders doesn't wish to complain. He can't quite see how his few scribbled lines of execrable, angst-fuelled poetry have got them here, but here they are. They reach for each other with desperation as the door clicks shut, but it's not the desperation of impatience; more a new need for affirmation. Full up with loving and fearing in equal measure, Anders squeezes himself into the kiss that passes between them.

When they part, his lips sting and his breaths taste of Hawke's mouth.

Tobias pulls loose the laces of his shirt, and slowly tugs the heavy linen over his head. He drops it to the floor—with his usual disregard for his belongings, of course, not to mention whoever has to clean up after him—and he watches Anders all the while… just stares levelly at him, with those hard green eyes.

He is beautiful. The line that marks where the sun touches him shows the contrast between his tanned, strong arms and the paler planes of his chest, normally hidden beneath the tough hide jerkins he wears. Between broad, thick shoulders, his neck rises as a corded column, and his jaw is square and firm. His body is padded with thick, solid planes of flesh, his muscles gentle swells rather than sharply defined peaks, for his is a kind of strength that comes with the business of being strong day after day, as natural as breathing.

Anders reaches for him, and his fingers shake a little as he lays his hand against that wide, lightly curved chest. It is like a shield, and it's easy to believe that he could find there all the shelter he's ever sought.

Tobias touches his cheek gently, questioningly, and Anders allows himself to be guided into the kiss. It is sweet and slow this time—just the dry warmth of lips and the soft graze of breath—and his fingers tense on his lover's body. As their mouths continue this quiet, indulgent dance, his hand slides south, trailing down the centre line of Tobias' torso, where the hardness of muscle becomes the softness of his belly, and he knows he whimpers a little when his fingers meet the rough leather ridge of Tobias' belt. It is both encouragement and defeat, frustration and need; tenderness and the admission that he is afraid of the depth of everything that lies between them. Anders closes his hand into a fist, digging his fingertips into the belt, into the fastening of the breeches beneath it, and his knuckles rub against the silken skin that marks the lowest part of Tobias' stomach, where the crisp curls of dark brown hair begin to rise.

The kiss deepens, filling with urgency and fire in a way it hasn't done in months. At first it is a slow crescendo, but he finds every ounce of his desire echoed in Tobias, and _he_ is terrible at patience. As the dams break, the flood of complicated, unsettling things is mingled with relief and hunger, and a kind of want that is satisfyingly simple.

Those sun-touched, wind-blasted arms fold around him and, as he feels himself clutched and so very eagerly groped, Anders' other hand knots itself in Tobias' short, messy hair. He tugs roughly at it, as roughly as their mouths now move against each other, their soft breaths turned to damp, ragged grunts and, when they break to breathe, Tobias' teeth snatch at his lower lip. It is a gentle act, cloaked in the playfulness of passion. He grazes, but does not hurt, and yet it is the possibility of pain—the stretching of the tender, sensitive flesh, the sharpness of his bite, and the strength that lies behind it—that makes Anders catch his breath. It doesn't last long. It is a mere second or two in the ballet of the kiss, and then it is over, wreathed in their small, intimate smiles, and the soft, panting laugher that echoes between their mouths.

By the time Tobias had divested himself of his breeches—and oh, Maker, whenever he is naked there should be a poet in attendance, just to write verses about his thighs—Anders has stripped. He isn't so bad to look at himself, he knows, though the bloom of his youth is gone, and he is no longer the vain dandy he was at the Vigil, when he had more luxuries than he's ever had in Kirkwall, even in the security of Tobias' home. Still, he is the leaner and wirier of them, and he is very pale next to Tobias, not that this seems to be something _he_ finds unattractive.

They clamber into the bed instead of falling upon it, and Anders thinks there is a pleasing kind of domesticity to this. Of course, it may just be the fact that it's a cold night, and the estate does hold a chill in its stone walls. Beneath the covers, Tobias kisses him again, over and over, and Anders holds him so tightly it's as if he's afraid he'll slip away. They make love like that, just touching and pushing against each other, moving and always moving, locked together in low, urgent gasps. The bed creaks violently, and probably anyone in the house will know what's going on, but they don't stop until they are both sweat-damp from head to toe, and liberally smeared with more plentiful libations. Anders' legs shake a bit as he leans against his lover and pants, waiting for the spots to clear from his vision. Twice without stopping takes it out of him more these days. He worries he's getting old… or maybe that Justice is cramping his style.

Tobias shivers as Anders' breath skims his wet skin, and he strokes his hair gently.

"I won't leave you," he murmurs. "I promise. I won't leave you, darling."

Anders closes his eyes, screws them up tight until bright shapes dance in the blackness inside his head, and as he presses his cheek to Tobias' chest he can hear the steady pound of his heartbeat. The bed is warm, and the air is close and stifling and smells of sweat and sex, and he cannot possibly have the right to be this happy… but is it happiness, when it tastes so much like fear?

He holds on tight, and exhales slowly as Tobias' arm wraps around his shoulders.

"That's what I'm afraid of," he says, so quietly as to almost just mouth the words.

If Tobias hears, he probably doesn't understand. They lay there, comfortably tangled in each other, and it feels like a resolution. It feels like there are promises and perfect vows keeping the future safe and honest, but Anders knows better.

Whatever happens, there will be nothing easy in this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Aaaand... that's it. Regular updates to JiS will resume asap. Thanks for reading!_


End file.
